Adepticon 2010 is rolling out a strong line up of hobby seminars. Top of the line instructor are available to help take your hobby skills to the next level. Be sure to register early, the most popular seminars sell out early.
The Hirst Arts terrain seminar will be returning. I always have fun teaching this class – the seminar is all hands on and very approachable. Rest asured, I am no Golden Demon winner – working with Hirst molds is a skill anyone can learn.
A re-do on the Etruscan Captain picture, the face should actually be visiable this time. Also posted are pics of the 2nd class spear men from Gorgon. The figures are easy to prep, with just a bit of drilling needed to open the spear hand. A few of the figure angles are a bit odd, with one leaning way back and one leaning far forward. I know some folks like action in their figures, but I could do with smaller angles.
After musing on using the Etruscans in the WAB Ancient Greek List, I’m having a second thought. Instead (or additionally), I may them under the Republican Roman list as Italian forces fighting in the Roman manipular style. Not 100% how to pull that off, but its an idea I’m kicking around.
Etruscan Captain from Gorgon Miniatures. For now, the figure will play as a command character in my Carthagian army. Perhapes the figure will one day have a full Etruscan army to lead.
Etruscan Captain
The first 1000 points of my Punic Wars army is painted and ready to play. Basing is a simple coat of paint, with sand & grass coming at some future time. Paint plan is super simple – block colors as a base, a wood stain dip followed by touch ups in the same base color. The army list is still a work in progress & has under taken a few changes from my first posts. The Gallic light cavalry are gone, done in twice by Macedonian spears in as many games by the warband rule. In their place are more skirmishers and a third Gallic warband.
Miniature Design Studios is hosting their second Design Challenge. Send MDS an email at info@miniaturedesignstudio.co.uk with your idea of what miniatures they should create. Sounds like they are looking for both figure ideas and a bit of motivation. One entry will be picked at random – then MDS has 21 days to produce the figures and get them into their web cart -or- give you a £25.00 credit.
Here are the rules of the challenge:
The scale will be 28mm
The troop type must be rank and file infantry
The subject must be either Biblical, Ancient or Dark Age (we don’t sell WW2!)
The figure will be designed in three variant poses (To be agreed)
Only one entry per person (I will check!)
All entries must reach MDS via email by 12.00pm, Friday 9th October 2009
My entry to them is for Hannibal’s Veterans.
The Veterans of Hannibal’s 2nd Punic war should be a rag-tag band of killers who spent a decade marching up and down Italy. Isolated and cut off from the home land, the army was forced to “resupply” in the field. Other companies produce Veterans who are cookie cutter copies of each other. Instead – I want to see 1 African, 1 Celt and 1 Iberian in looted Roman mail each with a unique helmet and shield. Figures are armed with long spears and swords at the belt. Spears are held upright & figures should rank cleanly on a 20×20 base.
Extra credit – make the heads on a separate sprue for additional figure variations.
I base this vision of the Veteran units on a paragraph from The Fall of Carthage by Adrian Goldsworthy which describes Hannibal’s warriors as a diverse and ill-provisioned group. Any other credible sources out there?
Ever have a project that seemed like a good idea at the time? I built a unit of 20 Beastmen for Imperial Guard using the lower half of the WFB Ungor with the Cadian torso & arms. Now that I look back on the unit – I must have been crazy. For those of you who don’t play Fantasy Battle, Ungors come 6 to a box with 8 Gors. Meaning I’d have to buy 3 boxes (and steal 2 more bodies from somewhere) in order to just get the beastman parts, the Cadian parts would take 2 more boxes.
But they are pretty sweet looking!
Converting my 6th ed Beast of Chaos army into a 7th ed army lead me to adding a Battle Standard Bearer. Wanting something quick and inexpensive, I converted a Chaos Warrior body with Beastman arms, legs and head. Most of the work was done with side clippers & exacto – with the warrior cape covering up most of the damage to the knees. A small ball of putty supports the head, together with a few strokes of the sculpting tool to blend in the new neck. All told, I may have spent more time digging in my bitz box for parts than working on the figure.
Beastman Battle Standard Bearer
Absolutely amazed by Testors Dull Coat, I’ve never had a spray sealer so completely kill the shine on figures before. The units I’m currently working on are dipped in wood stain, which leaves a heavy duty shine on the model. One coat of Testors returned the figures to a perfect dull finish (almost too perfect – a little bit of shine can help hide painting imperfections).
Picked up my can at the local Michael’s Arts and Crafts for about $4.50.
is a dead Space Wolf.
No need to go into the vile details, but I have no love of the Space Wolves. Here’s hoping for a good nerfing in their new codex.
The terrain piece is Armor Cast based on plastic card with a few Mordheim bits.
GWpertinet is holding a old school 40K mini “contest”, looking for the oldest, painted GW figure in people’s collection. This kicked off a trip to Stuff of Legends to see what I had in my collection. I started playing in 1997, but most of my old school minis have been picked up second hand. My oldest figures come from the Eldar command unit from the March 1988 catalog – including the harpist, Champion and both standard bearers. I even have the back packs for the standards – I always figured they belonged to the harpist, not the meta gunner!
However – the contest calls for painted figure. Once again, I was surprised to find the Space Marine Commander ranks with the oldest and dates to the 1991 catalog. The figure was painted in 1998 or 1999 and was probably amongst the first 50 figures I painted. Good to see I’ve learned something in the past 10 years – like how to high light and to always under coat metal with black.
Speaking of history. In my collection, I found 3 beaky marines with 1987 stamped on the tab. In only 4 years GW managed to jump from the bent over, scrawny proto Space Marine to the commander pictured above. While the over all style has change a bit over the years, this commander shares more similarities with Marines of 2009 than 1987. I don’t know if that’s a sign of a strong design or stagnation…..
Subordinate General with light armor and shield 88pts
Trained African #24 full command, 255 pts
Gallic Infantry #24 full command, 159 pts
Gallic Infantry #24 full command, 159 pts
Skirmishers #10, Musician, 45 pts
Gallic Cav #6 full command, 129 pts
Spanish Hv Cav #6 with light armor, full command, 165 pts
1000 pts
The army list is roughly based on Hannibal’s army, 2-4 years into the Italian campaign. Gallic Infantry makes up the majority of the infantry units, with Spanish and African units completing the formed units. Cavalry is a mix of Gauls, Spanish and Numidians. Units missing in the 1000 point list will be added at the 2000 level.
For this first phase, all figures are from Wargames Factory. My first order included not only the Celtic horse and Numidian I ordered, but bonus sprues of Roman Cav, Zulus and Ancient Germans! Multi-part plastic might be a bit more work to assemble, but they open the door for easy conversion. I like the Roman mail bodies with Numidian heads and shields as Spanish Cav. The standard Numidian spearman is servicable, but I’m concerned that the spear is too short. The Zulu with a Numidian head was an attempt at an additional skirmisher – but the smaller head looks funny on the well muscled body.
I’m interested in feed back from people on the following configurations.
Zulu with Numidian head, Ancient German x2, Celt, Numidian Spearman, Numidian Skirmisher
Gorgon Studios launches with their first miniature; Temperance, a 40mm collectors scale figure. Soon to follow are two line of Classics miniatures sculpted by Steve Saleh: early Spartans and Etruscans.
I know the folks behind Gorgon Studios. I’m both excited to see what they have to offer and confident that they can deliver quality productsto the gaming community.
From the Warp is sponsoring a best base contest. Getting motivated was a bit of a problem until I needed a proof of concept test for a pot topper.
What’s a pot topper? It is a 6 inch disk of static grass used with silk flower arrangements that can also be cannibalized for miniature ground cover. Look for pot toppers at Michaels Arts and Crafts – mine cost $1.99. Opening the topper took a sharp scissors and a bit of patience. The static grass sheet is stiff and full of texture. When cut apart, the clumps are between 4 & 6 mm tall. At this point, I’m not certain if they are any improvement over loose static grass, but I see great potential for the grass on larger projects such as terrain. In any case, the clumps are a much cheaper alternative to Silfor.
The rest of the base is made from more conventional materials: a bit of bark for the stone & field grass for the tall plant spikes. Painting is a simple combination of dry brush and wash. The whole project took about 2 nights of puttering around time in front of the TV.
I thought I would never get this unit finished – and its only the first half. I’m not sure if the horseman and steed just made for too much model to paint or if I’m finally shaking the rust off my painting skills & producing quality works. That’s a bit hint that I’m pleased with the results. Now I just need 10 more days to finish the other 4.
Reinforcements have arrived! For the second phase of my Arab army I selected Magister Militum miniatures. Customer service was excellent – each of my emails was promptly answered. The order took four days to process and about a week to ship from the UK to the US. All of the figures are well cast with minor flash and mold lines. Sculpting quality is average to above average, although there does seem to be a bit of flattening from the spin casting process.
I believe this line of miniatures used to be called Navigator – I don’t know if Magister purchased the product line, or simply re-sell the product. In any case – the Magister web site is still a work in progress. In the two weeks since I order, prices and packaging methods have changed. Even with the changes – the unit deal (24 figures) still seems the best way to buy in.
The Magister Arabs fit well with my existing Gripping Beast (cast by Old Glory 15). Foot solders match well for height – eye ball to eye ball the figures are the same size. The Magister minis are a bit bigger about the chest and perhaps a bit longer in the arm. I’ll have to mix a few into a unit, but I suspect the size differences will naturally blend as normal human variations.
Magister on the left. Gripping Beast on the right.
The Syrian Heavy cavalry are a more mixed lot. The riders are very upright (side effect of a one piece figure) and sit taller in the saddle than the crouching bowman. Trying to get the riders to fit their mounts will take a bit of pliers work – the legs are either too narrow or too wide.
Magister horses are a bit thin, short in length but stand taller than the Gripping Beast horse.
First two units of my Arab WAB army are (mostly) complete. The figures just need to be based – a task I’ll save until I’m truly bored. I’m still not 100% sold on the color scheme – the blues and greens jump out as bold, deep colors rather than the more pastel colors from my research.
23 Spearmen with full command
10 Archers
Three champions of chaos converted from various bits and pieces. The Undivided Champion’s body is a metal chariot rider, with an arm from the mutation sprue and an sword from the Chaos Warrior kit. The Khorne Champion is built with parts from the old Chaos Warrior plastics and the chaos mutation sprue with a torso and shoulder pad from the Marauders kit. The Nurgle champion is once again built using the old Chaos Warrior bits plus the head and guts from the zombie kit and what I think is an ork arm.
Wargames Factory finally announced the ship dates of their new plastic figures – but the first kit released will be colonial era British solders rather than the Roman Legions first advertised. Don’t worry – they promise a busy September as both the Legion kit and multiple Celts box sets are finally released. Rumor has it that the secret box is a chariot for the Celts.
GW white primer has been my go to spray primer for about a decade. I use past tense because GW has seen fit to replace their spray primer with spray paint and my can is about to run dry. Paint is fine for all the plastic kits GW produces these days, but primer makes a world of difference on metal figures. A bit of research turned up a number of discussions on the subject: ReaperMini forums brought me to a test site on Maximusinminimis for various primer products. TMP and Dakka also added their 2 cents to the topic. Be sure to check out the scratch test results for the rather popular choice of Krylon black.
The top recommendations were:
I wanted a product that I could buy locally – no need to pay more for shipping than the product. After a bit of shopping, I found Plasti-Kote white sandable primer at Micheal’s Arts and Crafts for less than $4.00 per can. Perfect! Now to try it out.
Primer Test: Plasti-Kote left and right. GW center.
The Plasti-Kote primer is as smooth or better than the GW primer. Drying time is similar and plasti-kote was able to spray clean dispite the humidity of July in Chicago. The only test left is to see how well the primer takes paint. Short of some sort of disaster with paint – I think I’ve found my new brand of primer.
The Gripping Beast figures I purchased for my Arab WAB army does not include banners with the standard bearer figures. The model is simply a figure with hands prepared to accept a home made shaft and banner. Time to see what I can come up with.
First, flattened a ball of Procreate between two sheets of plastic taken from a milk jug. (A little bit of water on the plastic & I had zero issues with the putty sticking to the work surface.) Next, cut the shape of the banner with an exacto blade (press the cut – don’t drag the cut). Finally, prop up the banner on a few rods to add the flowing shape.
The standard rod is .052 gauge brass rod. The banner is attached using super glue with a strip of paper folded over the joint span. Not only does the paper hide the ugly meeting between banner and rod, but I also hope the superglue infused paper will add a lot of joining strength.
Over all I’m satisfied with the result. The spotty paper should clean up once painted. The banner shaft is a bit short, but I’ll sacrifice height for easy transportation of the model. In the photograph I can see finger prints, but in real life the surface appears clean.
Standard bearer
Standard bearer back
Two Chaos Cavalry units, seldom played but still taking up space in the army collection.
The Marauder Horsemen are the best sort of figures – free. Many years back, a local game store was given this unit by the local GW rep as a pre-release display piece. In exchange for painting the unit, I received the models after short stay in the display case.
Chaos Marauder Horsemen
The Khorne Knights are plastic/metal hybrids from early 2000. Does not matter how many pins are used – the limbs spend more time off of the model than on. Last time I check the rule book, the small 4 man unit with the mark of Khorne packed a might punch. I’m sure with all the changes GW as made to the Chaos roster they now qualify to work as water boys.
Khorne Knights
Testing a variety of color schemes for my new Arab army. The goal is to have a variety of colors scattered through out the army. All too often my figures are too similar – unity in an army is an important quality to have, but I seem to take it to extremes at times. So far I have found little information/inspiration for painting an Arab WAB army. Osprey has a number of tiles for the time period – I purchased Armies of the Caliphates and Saracen Faris. Both book depicted the solders of the period in a variety of primary (if pastel) colors with soft brown leather foot ware and gear. Darrel Hindley creates a very different view of the Arab world with a controlled pallet of white and blue – check the bottom of his Figure Painter blog page.
Additional Sources:
Of the 6 figures – I’m most satisfied with the three in the front rank. The primary color pattern is much cleaner than the three brown figures in the back row. I really like the red – but a whole army in red robes would look too much like some chaos death cult. On the next set of figures, I need to revisit the brown & see if I can create a softer result.
All figures primed white and washed with a brown ink.
Spears: Vermin Brown (GW)
Bows: Tan Yellow (V)
Green: Orkhide Shade (GW), Snot Green (GW), 50/50 Snot Green/Ivory (V)
Red: Burnt Cad. Red (V), Beige Red (V), 50/50 Beige/White
White: Astronomican Grey (GW), white
Blue: Regal Blue (GW), Ultramarine Blue (GW), 50/50 Ultramarine Blue/Ivory
Flesh: Medium Flesh (V), Gryphonne Sepia (GW) (Borrowed this wash hint from Five Armies)
Brown: assorted combinations of Calthan Brown (GW), Iyanden Darksun (GW), Bubonic Brown (GW), Ivory, Sepia and Devlan Mud (GW)
Shoes: Tanned Flesh (GW) or Iyanden Darksun
Shield: Red Leather (V)
When a dozen gamers get together and all think a new product rocks (and hell has not frozen over) – its time to pay attention. The new Citadel Washes received high praise over at Dakka – surprised by the response, I bought a box to try out the washes myself.
One of the problems with my painting style is a lack of shade – and washes are a perfect way of restoring the shade/mid range/highlight balance on a finished figure. Below are washed (left) and unwashed (right) pictures of the same Pirate model. I was able to try out most of the washes provided in the box set: shirt- Devlan Mud, pants – Badab black, vest- Baal Red, skin – Ogryn Flesh, sword – Asurmen blue. I’m most impressed with Mud on the tan shirt. Ogryn Flesh is a lot like the old Flesh Wash. Baal Red did not do much on the vest – I really should give it another try using the Leviathan Purple instead. Asurmen blue on the sword is a bit much for a “historical” pirate – but I supect that a mix of black and blue has a lot of potential as an armor wash.
Pair of metal Chaos Spawn from Games Workshop. The spawn on the right is converted with the head/torso from a flamer demon & has the back spines replaced with flamer arms.
A set of Beastmen dating to around 2003. Originally painted for a dungeon crawl game played at the first Adepticon – I’d almost forgotten that I still owned these until I found them hanging out with the rest of the chaos army.
Spectre Hobbies was good enough to provide a Master Class Scenery & Basing Kit for review here at Chicago Terrain Factory. The package includes 4 seasons of turf & static grass, long strand field grass, snow cover, assorted cork, wood chips, white glue, water effect, sand, Texture Paste – White, Mineral Texture Gel and a few supporting items such as bases and stir sticks. The kit retails for $21.99 and is a quick and affordable way to stock up a modeling collection.
My favorite components of the basing kit are the two jars of paste. The Texture Paste is a creamy white material which applies sort of like shaving cream. Mineral Texture Gel contains sand and does a fine job of adding grit to the base of a model. Use either to cover slota base holes or to provide dry brush ready texture. The Mineral Gel dries solid, but retains an elastic property – I found this the hard way when trying to cut holes for field grass. Once my jars run dry, I’ll be looking to restock from Spectre.
Weighing in at .2 oz, the bags of turf and static grass are more than enough for an army sized basing project. When finishing my Pirate project, I based 19 figures using both turf & flock and barely put a dent in the amount supplied. The color range is similar to ground covers sold by Woodland Scenics, adding the stronger colors sold by Noch would be a nice upgrade to this kit.
I’m not sold 100% on cork as a rock substitute – it always seems to look a bit “corky”, but look at the example base to decide for yourself. Rather than supplying three types of cork, the kit might better supply single sheets with instructions to rip into rocks. I used one of the flat sheets on the base above and quickly began to generate my own cork rocks.
The one part water effect provides a high gloss finish to an already textured surface (see Texture Paste above). I’d rather have seen a 2 part kit included that is able to create a 3D water effect.
The field grass packages are much too small – creating 4 plugs for the pirate bases used up half of supplied grass.
The wood chips for use as slate are much too big. Of the two pieces, the smallest covers a 30mm base and the largest is better used on a CD sized base.
Full Disclosure: Spectre and CTF have an on going business relationship. This review is not compensated and not part of that relationship.
Getting ready for Adepticon next week with three pirate crews for the Legends of the High Seas demo table. Crews are constructed from Privateer Press Sea Dogs, Games Workshop Empire Militia, and Wargames Foundry Scurvy Dogs. Paint plan is simple with brown, black/grey & beach bone with a primary color for each crew.
Baegor the One Horned painted for the Adepticon Masterclass auction.
The figure is cleanly sculpted and cast with an attached rocky base. Detail on the model is crisp and easy to identify for painting. Cast in two pieces, the left wing is separate and requires assembly.
Assembling the wing joint was a bit of a chore. The figure comes with a small peg and hole as an attachment point. Not trusting the peg to hold the metal pieces together, I used (an over-sized) pin vise bit to drill a pin hole. The bit was much to large for the wing & ripped through the outer skin of the model. (Ever pin a Daemonette or anything by Rackham? It was sort of like that.) Plan B was to fill the hole with super glue and stuffed a ball of green stuff into the void. GS does a marvelous job of taking super glue and bonding metal parts together over large gaps.
Paint plan is white primer with GW brown ink base coat. Body is GW Dark Flesh blended to highlight with Vallejo Flat Red. Wings are GW bleachbone with GW brown ink wash. Details in light grey and bleachbone. Metals in bright silver and gold with brown ink wash.
Chaos Lord on mount. Weapon is a converted beastman sword with extended pommel.
Chaos Warrior Chariot. Look closely and you’ll be able to spot the halberd from the chaos lord kit.
Wyrd Miniatures has released a new 46 page Ezine called Wyrd Chronicles. The magazine contains a healthy batch of background information on the Wyrd mini sets, an interview with the company founder, tips for figure bases, sculpting walk thru, as well as tantalizing pics of some upcoming releases. The file is a bit large & not the sort of thing I normally read online – I’ll need to “borrow” the company printer tomorrow to get a hard copy for some in-depth reading.
Why bother with GW Spawn kits when you can create your own? Can never have too many spawn when playing with Morghur.
Plastic wolf with beastman upper body and green stuff scales.
Plastic wolf with banner pole head and green stuff scales.
The beast army box has a picture of men turning into beasts. What better spawn then a pair of Empire militia men being torn in two by the forces of chaos.
Archive GW Fiend.
Baegor the One Horned sculpted by Steve Saleh.
The annual Adepticon miniature has a number of obstacles to over come. The mini must try and satisfy both 40K and WFB players, try and have some sort of useful roll in an army collection and avoid the wrath of GW’s legal department. Baegor satisfies all of those criteria – an original demon character that should easily fit in with both existing demon collections and work well with the upcoming 40K/WFB demon books. The figure appears to be a bit thin, but then the photo does not have any sizing references other than the sculpted stone base. I’m eager to see what the production figure looks like, I hope the casting process does not flatten/stretch/thin the figure to any significant degree.
A few favorite figures from my miniatures collection.
A Possessed Chaos Space Marine inspired by the art work in the 3rd ed codex. For those of you who missed this piece – the possess is bursting from his armor with muscles twitching & claws in all directions. The figure is a Strigoi vampire with a Long Drong pistol and plastic CSM shoulder pads/backpack. A lot of dremmel work was required to fit the shoulder pads & a touch of green stuff built up the backpack mount as well as the leg armor.
A Chaos Space Marine Predator. This tank dates back to some time in the late nineties & is one of my first major conversions. The Grey Knight welded to the front armor is a never ending source of amusement to me. The rest of the conversion parts include demon prince heads, skeleton shield bosses and BFG launch bays used as engine vents.
This Confrontation warrior (exact name escapes me) comes from a time when I was hanging out with a few Golden Demon painters and was making a real effort to improve my painting skills.
Pirate crew #2 for the Legends of the High Seas demos at Adepticon. Figures are GW Free Company plastics with minor conversions. This crew’s color theme is blue, but in all other ways they match up with crew #1 with bleach bone, medium grey and various browns as the main color choices. Bases will be completed at a later date.
For some time now I’ve been working to improve my miniature picture taking skills. The best I can understand it, there is some strong voodoo involved in getting a clean shot of a miniature under artificial light using a Canon Power Shot A95. After much toil, I may finally have the settings I need to take crystal clear pics. Several references recommend using the AV setting with the aperture set to 9 (my Cannon seems to stop at 8 ) for max clarity of small objects. With this setting, I find Evaluate: Spot is critical to get the proper lighting on the figures. The default Evaluate creates a much to dark picture. The big winner is Drive Mode 2 – what is this cryptic setting? Timer 2 second delay. The timer is magic – even with a tripod, the act of taking the picture disrupts the camera.
examples with different degrees of post processing.
One other function I played around with is the Exposure setting. Pushing this setting from zero to +1 displayed a washed out, over exposed pic on the camera LCD screen. However, once the pic is loaded to the PC, the setting returns a well lite picture. This function may have some use as a workaround for a poor lighting or to tweak a shot that is proving difficult to light.
Learning links
http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000035.html
http://www.ifelix.co.uk/phomin.html
Update: converation with John over at Plastic Legions about the picture taking learning curve.
Series:
The BaneBlade is ready to hit the table. Standard paint scheme with a bit of weathering on the large gun barrels as well as the engine exhaust & vents. The blacking is a combination of Smoke (Vallejo) and SS cam black/brown (Vallejo) with a bit of Brown Sand (Vallejo) used to lighten when the black became over powering.
Only took most of a year to get my army photographed, but the Imperial Guard army gallery is finally up. Say hello to Karl’s Crusaders.
A five-hour whirlwind tour of the Gen Con vendor hall. This Saturday marked my very first Gen Con. Over all, I expected enormous event but instead found the convention to be merely huge. As you can tell from this blog, my interests run to war gaming, miniatures, terrain, resin, and sculpting – most of these areas were underrepresented in the vendor hall. The majority of the vendors catered to RPGs and CCGs, fortunately, I’ve enjoyed these genres in previous gamer lives. Finally, I was surprised by the number of costume & weapon sellers – never realized that Gen Con was such a draw for dress up.
The big find for me was Wyrd Miniatures. Their miniatures were familiar to me, but I had not given them much thought until seeing the figs in person. Their prices are reasonable too, the pics below left was only $6.50.
Aberant Games was a pleasant find. I liked a number of their figures, but was disappointed when the figure I wanted was part of a $30 box set. They have Saga – a Conan style fantasy game coming out soon, which should be a good source of human fantasy figs.
I could not pass on the opportunity to drop by the Hirst Arts booth. I wanted to meet Bruce & thank him for his support of the Adepticon Hirst Arts seminars. Also, the new Ruined Fieldstone mold is out – lucky me, I was able to buy the last one right off the display table.
Other random coolness: Picked up ProCreate from a Kraftmark rep working the paint and take. Ninja Magic was there with both their space ship figs & their magnetic connecter system. The new 40K RPG is due out Spring 08. Apparently the due date was pushed back when a third author was added. I have a mini-adventure book – the stats look a lot like the INQ game. Dark Age was there – unfortunately all of my pics failed to come out.
In addition to evaluating the products for sale, Dan (friend of mine with an eye for design) & I had great fun in evaluating the presentation of the booths themselves. Many sellers need to focus on their sales efforts – on more than one occasion we were forced to ask what the vendor was selling because the booth flash was confusing or incomplete.
Best Booth: Privateer Press did an excellent job of presenting their wares. The sales area contained 6-8 demo tables, a wealth of staff, many painted figure examples, a painting contest, accessible product and a central information booth. Now I just need to find those pirate figs they had in the display case. EDIT: make that Sea Dogs.
Worst Booth: Rackham was a mess with just three demo tables, only a handful of painted figures & product hidden in the back corner of their area. This is a company that wows me every day on line, but all the super cool painting and exceptional terrain must have been left in Europe.
Honorable Mention Worst Booth: Somebody is learning how to throw money away on RPGs. This booth took up an entire row, featured 2 actors in high quality Angel/Demon costume and a full-length professional backdrop. But their whole sales effort were two staffers doing demos with non-descript figures on a generic square grid. No sales material was available & the staff was busy running demos. You notice I don’t include a company name or link- I never did learn who they were or what the name of the product was.
Meta Gaming Two vendors were on site to help gamers turn their own games into reality. Lulu is a print on demand publisher – here is your chance to publish a book, one customer at a time. Toy Tech is a Chinese game manufacture that can create cards, board games and tokens.
Figures from the Gen Con painting contest.
Gaming tables that caught my eye.
Gear & Piston Basing Kit for use with 40K, WarMachine, AT43 and other miniature gaming figure bases. Each kit contains 12 resin cast-basing pieces, which are applied ad hoc to manufacture supplied bases. Now each figure can have a unique presentation, adding character and interest to individual bases.
One of the requirements of the up coming Enemy of My Enemy 40K tournament is an enemy unit for my IG army. Stubby is configured as a Gun Fex with a Venom Cannon and Barbed Strangler to stand in for a standard Leman Russ tank. GW saw fit to place both of the heavy guns on the right hand side of the model, making a conversion mandatory. The trick is to use opposite side arms from something useless like death spitters or scything talons to move the barbed strangler gun arm to the left & the venom cannon feed arm to the right. A bit of hacking & green stuff & Stubby is ready to go.
Because Stubby will part of the heavy support unit, the Fex will get the same paint job I 
use on my heavy armor. The list below runs contrary to most methods of painting & the first few steps will look rather poor- but follow the process thru to the end. The poor quality coverage of the craft paint over the white is an important step. Use a lot of water in this process and the paint will leave large, splotchy patchs all over the model. The following ink wash and dry brush will blend the spots in with each layer. The end product is a smooth & realistic base coat without the uniformity of a scale paint job.
Tank Paint Chart
The dry brush step did not work out as planned. On the flat armored plates of a tank, the light gray smoothes out the rough spots and calls attention to the edges of the armor. On the Carnifex, nothing is smooth – the whole model is covered in organics, and the grey dry brush coats every in a light chalky finish. Solution: pull out a bottle of Dirty Dark Brown Wonder Wash & re-ink the model to try and re-establish the shades.
The wonder wash successfully re-sets the model to the pre-dry brush state by restoring shade and definition. Overall, an excellent example of how a wash can save your fig after a painting mistake. Since dry brushing was not going to work, the much more tedious method of layering is used. Layers of Kommando Khaki (GW) and Sky Grey build up the final color. With the base coat complete, details of Shadow Grey (GW) and Goblin Green (GW) can be added to complete the paint job.
Three steps to getting clear mini shots on a Canon A95 Power Shot. The set up is the same as the last go-around: plane white sheet, 2 75 watt bulbs, tripod. Once again, I fight the battle with the Camera User Guide.
The following pics have been cropped and re-sized, but other wise untouched. Over all, I’m rather satisfied with the results. Still need a bit of tweeking with the light sources to cut down on shadows under the feet, a gradiated blue back drop would be handy and some sort of light box is still worth looking into.
Learning to take better pics and photos of 40K miniatures and models. A lot of online photo guilds are useful or even simple, but I still need to translate the sage advice into actual pics for this blog. Game plan is to pick up a few quality light sources on the cheap, flood the model with light and snap away from a tripod.
Step 1: Stopping trip to Target
*bulbs are ‘Crystal Clear’, notable by their high price and clear glass bulbs.
Step 2: Set up desk
Hang a plane white sheet of paper as a back drop. Not only will the backdrop eliminate any clutter behind the model, but the white face should help reflect more light onto the model.
Test 3: Results
Both photos were taken with my new lighting set up. The photo on the left is touched up with Microsoft Picture It!*. The photo on the right is cropped, but otherwise unaltered. Moral of the story, even bad pics can be helped with a touch of computer TLC.
*software that came bundled with my PC along with the other Microsoft products. Spent about 5 minutes flipping switchs for brightness and sharpness.
Conclusion:
I need more work on my photo skills – I’m not at all happy with the yellow haze and the general murkiness in the recesses of the model. Two plans spring to mind – first, add more light (I’ve got my eye on a bank of florescent lights at Wal-Mart); second, try to use and understand terms such as ‘color balance’ and ‘aperture’ (I’ve already tried to read what passes for my camera’s manual without much success).
Links to people who know what they are talking about:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html
http://minivault.com/Photography.htm
http://dakkadakka.com/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/8/postid/123352/view/topic/Default.aspx
http://ezcube.com/
The Phoenix Club is site dedicated to the idea that gamers don’t have to wait for companies to product models that they are interested in purchasing. Instead, member brain storm ideas, select projects, then fund the creation of small scale model projects. The champion of the site is ‘Doctor Thunder’ who blazed the trail with his female Cadian project. Despite being a new site, the forum is rather busy and has a lot of good project ideas flying around. I intend on keeping an eye on this group to see what sort of out of the box projects they come up with.
Ruin bases 25mm for 40K. Getting the Apoxie Sculpt slab off of the floor tile was a bit of a chore, but accomplished with out too much damage. The back of the sculpt was scored & snapped into 10 pieces. Each piece is mounted on a 25mm base and trimmed using a needle nose pliers.
When I first envisioned this project, I wanted all 10 bases to be linked by a common ruin pattern. Turns out, my slab was a bit over sized (the 25mm measurement is at the bottom of the base) and much of the continuity between bases was lost. Oh well, maybe some one with a sharp eye will put the puzzle together.
Etched Apoxie Sculpt slab
Completed bases.
Close up of the ruin and the base edge.
Ruin bases for 40K. When playing around with Apoxie sculpt, I found the epoxie both carved well and shattered into a natural rock like look. The plan is to carve an entire floor of ruins, then cut it into 10 1×1 sections and mount on bases.
Step 1: roll out a 5×2 sheet of Apoxie Sculpt to a thickness of 1/8 inch. I used a left over piece of half inch pvc as a rolling pin. Trim the sheet to the rectangular shape. The sheet is mounted on a piece of vinyl floor tile – smooth, flat and expendable if the Apoxie needs to be force-ably removed.
Step 2: Etch ruins using a scribing tool and an x-acto blade. A two level technique was used for the ruins – deep cut in the center, light cut around the edges.
New project: 25 mm urban style bases for 40K.
WIP photo of the first 6 bases. The remaining exposed surface of the base will get a coat of sand. These are the first in a set of 10. With any luck, I should have cast examples ready for the Adepticon bitz swap.
Games-Plus is hosting their spring auction in March. I’ve never made it to one of their auctions, but have had great fun at other game auctions. Reports from previous auctions make this out to be a must attend event. Apparently the stock of product is large and the auction goes all day long. Time to start thinking up a shopping list.
WarGamers Market a new gamer run auction site.
Feed up with rising fees and endless clutter on Ebay, these guys decided to open their own site. Basic listings are free, with addon charges for upgrades.
Hard to beat those prices for listing. It’s entirly possible you will see Chicago Terrain Factory castings posted for sale in the near future. All that remains to be seen, is if the site will pull in enough volume to make ‘free’ worth the effort of listing.
Leman Russ Annihilator for 40K
Forge world has come out with a las-cannon equipt Leman Russ. The trial rules have the tank listed at 145 pts, which gets you a twin link LC in the turret & one more in the hull. A bit less fire power than a predator, but more armor. For the same 145 points I can get 1.5 IG squads armed with LC. Seems like at least an adaquate deal for IG. Only down side is it eats up heavy slots normally used for templates.I like it, a dedicated tank buster with lots of staying power. Best part – a simple turret swap turns a normal Russ into an Annihilator and back again.
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